EVE Online

We are happy to announce that this year's Holiday Event, The Yoiul Festival, begins next week!

As New Eden approaches the New Year, the CONCORD Assembly seeks to bring the Empires and capsuleers together, in a celebration of human achievement.

During the 12 days of the festival, which begins on December 14th, capsuleers will be able to check their redeeming system for gifts that will range from ship SKINs, to trinkets that mark events throughout the year, as well as a Cerebral Accelerator, apparel, and other celebratory gifts. In addition to this, new fireworks will be issued over the holiday period, and to ring in the New Year on December 31st as we celebrate the arrival of YC119.

Please be aware that starting December 14th at 00:00:00 UTC these holiday gifts will begin to appear in your redeeming system. Each gift will be present for 24 hours, until 23:59:59 UTC, when it will be replaced by the next gift. Be sure to log in and claim your gifts from your redeeming system to avoid missing out!

The final gifts issued on December 25th will be be available in the redeeming systems of pilots through until 23:59:59 UTC on 2017/01/09, as will the New Year gifts issued on December 31st!

With the successful launch of EVE Online's November 15th expansion, Ascension[updates.eveonline.com], we (Team Genesis) have introduced the first phase of our planned new New Player Experience (NPE) revamp called Inception.

To find out more about our development journey check out this previous blog[community.eveonline.com].

In Inception you become a key player for your empire in responding to the mysterious Drifter´s who are attacking all over.

Now we’re all about the present, and the future. Since this momentous release we have been hard at work reading through the fantastic feedback provided by EVE players all over the interwebs. We've been inundated by positivity towards our campaign for the New Player Experience, and we're humbled by the warm reception you have given both us and the new players enjoying their first steps into EVE Online. With this feedback, we've been updating Inception with changes and fixes to further polish the experience for all of New Eden’s newly created capsuleers.

We wanted to take this opportunity to highlight just some of the changes we have made;

All new characters that are created on accounts that existed before the release of Ascension, will now receive the new NPE. This can be skipped at any time, by clicking the icon in the Info Panel but you will not be able to resume or come back to Inception. We encourage you all to try it out!

We increased the Skill Point limit for Mini Skill Injectors to 1,500,000 SP from the previous limit of 750,000. Due to how this limit works, it takes into account unallocated Skill Points and many new characters were starting out with 250,000 due to our Refer a Friend program[secure.eveonline.com] which caused confusion during Inception.

Many small but needed UI and UX changes. These consisted of text changes, further UI highlights that are more descriptive and more.

We also added more systems as possible site destinations for Inception. The influx of new players was so rapid and massive that we needed to respond by doing some performance optimization. So far Gallente have been the most popular choice.

We also had many smaller fixes and improvements made to EVE Online that can be reviewed in the patch notes.[community.eveonline.com]

[content.eveonline.com]

"Hold the phone! Who destroyed my Empire´s Titan? I must investigate."

The December release for EVE will also include several improvements from us as we continue to iterate towards our internal “Inception 1.5” milestone. We’re still not finished but here are some of the changes we are working on:

Introducing the concepts of multi-targeting while in combat with NPCs

Providing a distance guidance when out of looting range from Cargo containers / Wrecks

Balancing NPC Bounty payouts to feel more significant

Providing more information on fitting during the Battle Preparations operation, to guide players to fit multiple weapons and the damage control unit

Refining the flow while participating in the Hidden Drifter Zenith site and operations.

Improving skill training guidance

Improving flow and gameplay in the Empire Might site

And more fixes and small usability improvements

[content.eveonline.com]

"Mother crowbar, what is this evil looking thing? Best get to work with my Empire on terminating this from space, looks malicious"

So thanks again to the community for a massively positive response to our first efforts in revamping the NPE. We hope that Inception is helping you guys recruit and to get more new players in to the game that stick around and get connected to this awesome community of ours.

We are happy to announce that EVE Online: Ascension has been successfully deployed!

The largest and most significant update in the history of EVE Online, Ascension brings a new access paradigm to EVE Online that allows pilots to play for free.

The headline feature of EVE Online: Ascension, Clone States[community.eveonline.com], brings free access to EVE Online in the form of Alpha Clones, using a predetermined skillset, giving access to a whole host of playstyles and in-game content without the need for a subscription. In addition to this, the first phase of a completely re-worked new player experience, Inception,[community.eveonline.com] will offer new pilots more assistance and guidance than ever before as they take their first steps into the vast expanse of New Eden.

Full details are available in the patch notes[community.eveonline.com].

Important Launcher Information:

Please be aware that due to the deployment of EVE Online: Ascension, which requires that you accept the new End User License Agreement, all pilots will need to sign in via SSO again and re-add their accounts to the EVE Launcher.

The EVE Online Launcher will not automatically remove accounts, so some pilots may experience situations where their accounts appear logged in, however when they click the play button for the first time since the deployment, they are signed out and need to log in again. This is normal behavior, and the easiest way to remedy it is to go to your launcher settings and click "forget all accounts" to clear the list of logged in accounts, before signing in to them again.

Important EVE Portal (Mobile App) Information:

Given the changes that have been deployed with EVE Online: Ascension, pilots using the EVE Portal mobile app will need to remove all characters from their app and re-add them. To remove characters from EVE Portal, simply head to the character switch screen and swipe left on each character to remove them. From here, they can be re-adde via the normal process.

Email Verification / Two Factor Authentification Notification:

Please also be aware that as stated in this news item[community.eveonline.com], in order to log in to EVE Online after the deployment of the Ascension expansion, you will need to have a verified email address. Please make sure you verify your email address as soon as possible!

If you are receiving a prompt for an authentication code but do not have two factor authentication enabled, you will need to check the email address associated with your account in order to retrieve the authentication code. This authentication is to verify that your login attempt is legitimate and will only occur once, unless yourself or someone else tries to log your account in from a different geographical location or a different computer, at which point you will be prompted to enter a code sent to you via email again.

Feedback:

We have several threads available on the EVE forum for feedback, discussions and updates: